Derek Zumsteg

Marketing as lying about the worst quality of a product

Watch ads enough, and you’ll start to note that much of the time, the ad is an attempt at an almost Rovian sales philosophy: selling the weakest part of your product as a strength (SUVs with huge gas tanks saying “get 300 miles on a single tank!”).

But Xbox 360 marketing’s taken this up hilariously:

Limit 1 per customer. Due to high demand, orders placed after October 26th may not ship until March 2006.
If you’re a serious gamer looking for the ultimate console, the search ends here. Fully loaded, the Xbox 360 Ultimate Bundle

It’s $699.92.

The search doesn’t end “there” so much as this is the waiting room for the actual place where the search ends. If you’re looking for a “the ultimate console” you haven’t just found one: you’ve found the queue. Now just wait a long, long time.

It’s crazy. You could sell anything out of stock this way. “Are you tired of pedaling around on a bike that weighs over 10 pounds? Well, for only $5,000,000 you can buy a bike made of pure Unobtainium, a substance we haven’t even invented yet, but which we’re sure will offer amazing handling and performance sometime after 2050.”